By late October the irrigation season in northern Larimer County is finished — lines blown out, valves shut, the ditches running low and then not at all. That is when Bednarik Sprinklers changes tools and starts watching the sky to the west instead of the soil. Snow removal in Wellington is a different discipline than water: no schedule, no forecast anyone fully believes, just the phone, the cold, and a driveway that needs to be passable at 5 a.m. The work is plowing, shoveling, and reaching the places a blade cannot — the gate, the stoop, the strip beside the mailbox. There is a logic to it that a sprinkler hand already understands, since both jobs come down to moving water where it will do the least harm.